Jurassic Park Summary

As the tropical rain falls in the village of Bahìa Anasco on the west coast of Costa Rica, Roberta Carter sighs and watches from the clinic window. She came here to spend two months as a visiting physician and expected to find sun and some relaxation after spending two years in an emergency medicine residency at Chicago’s Michael Reese Hospital. Instead, it has rained every day of the three weeks she has been here.

Costa Rica has one of the most advanced medical systems in the world and the clinic is clean and well supplied. Manuel Aragòn, her paramedic, is intelligent and well trained, so the level of medicine she practices here is the same as in Chicago. They hear a helicopter hovering above the clinic, looking for a place to land. The chopper belongs to InGen, the construction company which is building a resort on an island more than a hundred miles offshore. Once it lands on the beach, two black crewmen carry a stretcher and a red-headed white man in a yellow raincoat and red Mets cap accompanies it. He introduces himself as Ed Regis and says the man on the stretcher is very sick. Carter suggests they fly another twenty minutes to San Jose, the capital city, but they cannot fly over the mountains because of the weather.

The patient is an eighteen-year-old-boy with a gaping slash on both his shoulder and his leg. He is unconscious, and Regis believes the boy will probably die. His wounds suggest that the boy was somehow mauled, as his shoulder and leg are both ripped open to the bone. When asked about it, Regis says he did not see the accident but was told a backhoe ran over the boy. Back in Chicago, Carter saw a child who had been attacked by a rottweiler and a circus performer who was attacked by a Bengal tiger. Animal attacks have a distinctive look, and that is what she sees in this boy’s wounds. When she says so, Regis is nervous and edgy, insisting it was a construction injury.

A closer examination reveals no dirt in the wounds, just an unusual froth which seems like saliva and a rotten stench, the smell of “death and decay.” Regis leaves and Aragòn refuses to help after the boy sits up and repeats the word raptor. The natives are superstitious about hupia, vampire-like ghosts who kill children at night.

The boy’s hands are covered with cuts and scratches, typical of defensive wounds, and Carter takes pictures. Suddenly the boy sits up, vomits blood several times, and goes into convulsions before dying. When Aragòn calls him, Regis quickly reenters the room. He says he is sure Carter did all she could and then takes the boy and leaves immediately in the helicopter. Later, Carter realizes her camera is gone and, curious, she looks up the word raptor. It is a bird of prey.

In Dallas, thirty-year-old Ellen Bowman convinces her husband to take their daughter, eight-year-old Christina, to Costa Rica. Her husband Mike, a real estate developer, eventually agrees to go for a two-week vacation. Once they arrive, however, Ellen reveals her true motivation to come to the tropical nation: the cheap plastic surgery in luxurious private clinics. This deceit infuriates Mike; he refuses to comply with her wishes. The couple has a significant fight over the matter.

Mike drives a Land Rover through the Cabo Blanco Biological Reserve, admiring the gorgeous views of the Pacific from the road at the top of a cliff. It seems as if perhaps his vacation has finally begun. Both Ellen and Tina wonder if they are on the right road, but Mike assures them this is the way to the secluded beach they want to find, though they have not seen another vehicle in fifteen minutes.

As the Land Rover descends, a “small, black shape” flashes across the road and into the jungle. From the back seat, Tina shrieks and her mother wonders if it was perhaps a squirrel monkey, different from the howler monkeys that are common in the area. Tina wants to add it to the list of animals she has seen on her trip, but Mike is not certain that is what they saw. The book Tina has says they are likely to find howler and white-faced monkeys, three-toed sloths, and coatimundis near Cabo Blanco’s beaches.

When they arrive at the beach, there is no one anywhere within miles. Tina starts to run on the beach and Ellen worries about snakes. Bowman assures her that reptiles cannot control their body temperatures and snakes would therefore “be cooked” in the ninety-degree sand.

The girl runs until she has to stop and then sits; the water is warm and the waves are gentle. She sees her mother waving at her to come back, but she does not want to return. Her mother continues calling her, but soon Tina moves back up the beach into the shade of the palm trees where she sees many bird tracks. Costa Rica is famous for its birds, and the country has three times as many as Canada and the Americas, despite its small size.

She hears a rustling behind her and soon a lizard appears, standing about a foot tall on its hind legs, balancing with its thick tail. It leaves three-toed footprints like a bird, has a long, skinny neck, and chirps as it walks toward Tina. The girl assumes it is tame because it is protected in the park, and she holds out her hand to the creature. It immediately jumps onto her hand, pinching her palm with its feet and pressing her arm down with its weight. Suddenly it climbs up her arm and toward her face.

As they search for their daughter, the Bowmans suddenly hear Tina scream.

The Clínica Santa Maria is the modern hospital in Puntarenas; it is “spotless and efficient,” but Mike Bowman is still nervous as Dr. Cruz lowers the oxygen tent around Tina. She is “desperately ill” and the Bowmans are very far from Texas.

When he got to his screaming daughter on the beach, her left arm was bloody and covered with bites the size of thumbprints and flecks of what seemed to be “foamy saliva.” Even before he could get her to the Land Rover, her arm began to redden and swell. As Bowman drove, the swelling moved up to her neck and Tina began having trouble breathing.

Now the swelling has subsided and Cruz thinks the girl will survive. He cannot identify the quickly fading bites, but he takes photos. The bites are like nothing he has ever seen, and he takes three samples of the sticky saliva. One will go to his office, one will be sent to San Jose, and one will remain at the Clínica, frozen, in case it is needed. The two men look again at the picture Tina drew of the animal which attacked her; it is unfamiliar to both of them. Cruz has sent for Dr. Guitierrez from the Reserva Biológica de Carara, since no researchers have been working on Cabo Blanco beach for the past several months.

Guitierrez is an American, a former Yale field biologist who has been in Costa Rica for the past five years. After examining Tina and the photos and asking some pointed questions, Guitierrez says he is confident the girl will recover and knows the animal that bit her. Only a dozen of the six thousand species of lizards walks upright, and only four of them can be found in Latin America. It was a Basilisk amoratus. It is not poisonous, but fourteen percent of all people are allergic to reptiles, and Tina is undoubtedly one of them.

While lizard bites are not uncommon, Guitierrez is perplexed when Bowman explains that Tina was sitting still when the lizard attacked, but he...

(The entire section is 507 words.)

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In the shade of the mangrove trees on Cabo Blanco beach, Marty Guitierrez is sitting in the spot he thinks Tina Bowman was sitting when she was attacked by the lizard. While he told the Bowmans that lizards do bite, he has never heard of a basilisk lizard bite or of anyone being hospitalized by any kind of lizard bite.

After making some calls and doing some research, Guitierrez discovered that several small children along the coastline have been bitten by lizards of some kind over the past two months. Now the biologist suspects the existence an unknown species of lizard, not surprising in Costa Rica, a country rich with diversity in its plants, insects, animals, and birds. New species are being discovered all the time here, mostly caused by deforestation as civilization encroaches on the forests.

While such discoveries are exciting, they also present the looming specter of new diseases, and that is why he is here today, hoping to find the creature and test it for disease. Toward evening, he finally gives up and starts walking up the beach when he sees a lone howler monkey walking ahead of him. It is not an unusual sight, and Guitierrez looks for more of the monkeys which usually travel together. This one is alone, and he is eating what Guitierrez recognizes as a basilisk lizard.

Immediately Guitierrez shoots the monkey with a dart from his air pistol and the creature drops the lizard before running off. Guitierrez will write the preliminary report but plans to send the lizard remains to the acknowledged lizard expert in New York: Edward H. Simpson, emeritus professor at Columbia University.

The name, Tropical Diseases Laboratory of Columbia University (TDL), sounds much grander than it really is, according to its head, Doctor Richard Stone. It is much smaller than it once was, and is quite unprepared for the package which arrives this morning. The label on the package reads “Partially masticated fragment of unidentified Costa Rica lizard.” Since Ed Simpson is in Borneo for the summer, his secretary had called to ask Stone to examine the lizard because of the possibility of a communicable disease.

The cylinder is the size of a half-gallon milk container; it is locked with metal latches and has a screw top. It is marked “International Biological Specimen Container” with warning stickers and labels...

(The entire section is 503 words.)

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Once she calms down, Elena Morales decides not to report the lizard attack, fearful that the incident might somehow be seen as her carelessness. Instead she tells the mother the baby died of SIDS and sent the same conclusion to San Jose on the required forms. Sudden Infant Death Syndrome is a relatively common though unexplained phenomenon, so her report is never challenged.

The San Jose university lab which tests the saliva sample from Tina Bowman’s arm is surprised to discover a protein with the stunning molecular mass of nearly two million, “one of the largest proteins known.” The venom seems to be similar to that of a cobra, though it is much more primitive. The lab also detects an enzyme which is a marker for...

Doctor Alan Grant does not notice the excessive heat or the discomfort of his aching knees or his lungs breathing in dust; he is intent on the six inches of sand in front of him because it contains the remains of a baby carnivorous dinosaur. It was two months old when it died seventy-nine million years ago; and, if it is complete, it is the first infant skeleton ever to be discovered.

Snakewater, Montana, is a barren inland sea (land which was once covered with water) which poses infinite discoverable possibilities to the forty-year-old paleontologist because it is known for its dinosaur nesting grounds. Grant is interrupted by the arrival of Bob Morris, a lawyer for the Environmental Protection Agency. Grant and his...

Doctor Alan Grant returns Alice Levin’s call and is sure what she describes could not be a basilisk lizard, but she will fax him the x-ray for him to examine. Grant is excited about his latest find and tells his assistant, Doctor Ellie Sattler, that he has uncovered the head of a two- to four-month-old velociraptor and hopes to uncover an intact skeleton.

This is a distinctive find, as the Snakewater research team has only uncovered the remains of duckbilled hadrosaurs. Their evidence indicates that as many as twenty thousand of them, in herds like buffalo, once lived here. What Grant has not yet discovered is any evidence of predators. Researchers would not have expected to find many large predators, based on the...

Donald Gennaro is in the San Francisco offices of Cowan, Swain and Ross, and his boss (Daniel Ross) is unhappy. After talking to John Hammond, Gennaro tells Ross that the firm can no longer trust Hammond, as he is under investigation by the EPA, is behind schedule, and rumors of trouble in Costa Rica have made investors nervous. The latest news about some kind of living dinosaur is the latest problem.

The firm has just learned of the potential problems from a local investor and firm is now requiring Hammond to conduct independent weekly site inspections of the project for the next three weeks, despite Hammond’s insistence that the site has extravagant security precautions. Gennaro helped the eccentric Hammond gather...

Hammond sends Doctors Grant and Sattler a complete set of blueprints for the resort he is building on Isla Nublar with a note saying he is looking forward to seeing them. The entire document is riddled with security warnings and marked as the exclusive property of InGen Inc. The topographical map shows the plans for a resort, but there is little detail about any of the buildings other than the Safari Lodge. The rest of the island appears to be open areas subdivided into six curving sections marked with some kind of code.

The plans rather resemble a zoo; however, each subdivision is separated by a thirty-foot-wide concrete moat and electric fences. The buildings, too, seem more like fortifications or bunkers than typical...

Donald Gennaro does not want to go to Costa Rica this weekend; he will be missing his daughter’s fourth birthday party, and neither his wife nor his daughter is happy about his being gone. His secretary had to purchase him a suitcase and a few essential items of clothing, and as Gennaro leaves the office, Dan Ross tells him to have a good trip. He makes one thing clear, however: if there is a “problem on that island, burn it to the ground.” Even if it is a large investment, and no matter what Hammond says, Ross wants it done.

Hammond’s Gulfstream II jet is heading to Choteau to pick up the scientists. Gennaro has forgotten how short Hammond is; his feet do not even touch the carpet below his seat. Hammond is...

Paleontology research, unlike most other scientific research fields, does not receive any government funding; instead it is dependent on “money men” like Hammond. Doctor Grant despises having to cater to these investors, but Doctor Sattler reminds him it is a necessary part of the job. Though he is curious about the Costa Rican island, Grant is going this weekend because he understands Hammond needs him to go and that is how patronage works.

The jet arrives, and Grant is surprised at how cramped it is inside, despite its luxuriousness. Hammond introduces Grant and Sattler to Donald Gennaro, calling Gennaro his associate. Grant immediately dislikes the man, and when Gennaro speaks his surprise that Sattler is a...

This is the first emergency meeting Biosyn Corporation of Cupertino, California, has ever called. The Board of Directors is waiting for its last member to arrive from San Diego so they will have a quorum; they will be asked to vote on something significant tonight. Lewis Dodgson wishes he had not had to call this meeting, but the head of the company was adamant that Dodgson needed to get approval for this decision.

Thirty-four-year-old Dodgson is “famous as the most aggressive geneticist of his generation, or the most reckless.” He was ousted from Johns Hopkins as a graduate student for planning a regimen of gene therapy without his patient’s permission before being hired by Biosyn to conduct the “controversial...

Lewis Dodgson, with a ridiculous straw hat for a disguise, is late for his meeting with a man in the coffee shop of the departure building of the San Francisco airport. For six months, Dodgson has “cultivated this man, who has grown more obnoxious and arrogant with each meeting.” Dodgson is forced to overlook this behavior because the stakes are too high for both of them.

“Weight for weight,” bioengineered DNA is now the most valuable commodity in the world. A single specimen of some materials, too small to see except under a microscope, could be worth billions of dollars to the right investor. This phenomenon has created industrial espionage, and Dodgson is quite good at it. Many items are comparatively easy to...

At about midnight, a man boards Hammond’s waiting jet. Thirty-five-year-old Ian Malcolm is dressed completely in black and smiles at Hammond’s “forced graciousness.” Malcolm introduces himself as a mathematics guy to the other three passengers and seems amused by his description.

Doctor Grant has heard of Malcolm, “one of the most famous of the new generation of mathematicians” who is openly interested in the real world rather than the cloistered world of academia. This new group of mathematicians breaks with tradition and uses computers, works with nonlinear equations, uses mathematics to describe things which actually exist, and scandalously acts “like rock stars.”

Dennis Nedry, a fat, slovenly man who claims to do something with computers on the island, joins Hammond’s group in San Jose. The helicopter ride to the island takes about forty minutes, and the terrain below them is rugged until they cross the mountains and see the a vast expanse of beach and water. The pilot points out the Cabo Blanco preserve below them.

Isla Nublar is “not a true island” but an upthrusting of volcanic rock from the ocean floor, which partially explains why it is almost always shrouded in fog. When he sees the island for the first time, Malcolm thinks it looks like Alcatraz. Hammond says the island is eight miles long and three miles wide, totaling twenty-two square miles, which makes Isla...

Doctor Sattler’s first thought is that the dinosaur is stunningly beautiful, graceful, dignified - nothing at all like the lumbering, ponderous beasts typically portrayed in books. This sauropod looks at the humans alertly and makes a “low, trumpeting sound, rather like an elephant.” In a moment, three more heads rise above the foliage.

Genarro is shocked. Though he had known about the project for years and knew what to expect, he somehow never expected the creatures to be real. Genetic technology had always seemed to be just a vague concept to him, and now all Genarro can think is that this island is going to make everyone involved with the project...

As the group walks toward the visitor building, they are struck by the extensive and elaborate planting” which makes them feel as if they are entering another world. Grant wants to examine the dinosaurs more closely, but for now he agrees with Sattler that the animals “look good.”

Paleontology has been nothing but a matter of deduction for the past one hundred and fifty years, ever since the first gigantic dinosaur bones were discovered; these scientists have examined the clues and made their best, most reasoned deductions. One of the biggest current debates is whether or not dinosaurs were warm-blooded. Early research classified them as cold-blooded reptiles, but in the last fifteen years a group of...

Ed Regis begins the tour at the high-tech and highly fortified visitor building. It is filled with unfinished exhibits, such as the one called “When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth.” Before they go any further, Gennaro explains to the group that they are here to make a very important decision. This is a park full of genetically engineered dinosaurs moving freely through the mostly natural setting. Before tourists are allowed to visit the park, this group must determine if the island is safe for visitors and if the dinosaurs are safely contained.

Gennaro presents two pieces of evidence which must be considered. First is the unknown dinosaur species from the west coast of Costa Rica which Grant examined via x-ray back in...

Tim Murphy is about eleven years old; his sister is seven or eight. Both of them can tell immediately that something is wrong. Their grandfather, John Hammond, is arguing with a younger man (Gennaro); the other adults are standing back, looking uncomfortable. Ed Regis makes the introductions. Tim realizes that Grant is the author and illustrator of his favorite book on dinosaurs. As the tour continues, Grant walks with Tim and discovers the boy is an avid dinosaur enthusiast, both knowledgeable and passionate. Regis is unhappy at being relegated to a babysitter for Hammond’s grandchildren for the weekend; he is head of public relations for Jurassic Park and has plenty to do before the park opens next year. No one at InGen takes...

Ian Malcolm asks Doctor Wu how many species of dinosaurs he has created in his laboratory; Wu thinks the number is fifteen, but he is not sure because sometimes he discovers genetic flaws in the animals as they develop and is forced to start again. What he does know is that he has created “an unusually large number” of procompsognathids, which he calls “compys.” They are scavengers, similar to jackals, and Wu wanted plenty of them to help keep the park clean.

Two overwhelming problems exist in the park. One is the amount of food needed to feed the dinosaurs (food is imported to the island every two weeks) and the other is the amount of excrement the creatures produce. Unfortunately, the droppings of the larger...

Hammond and Henry Wu are in Hammond’s comfortable and elegant bungalow at the northern end of the park. Hammond asks the geneticist if the visitors seemed to believe everything Wu told them. Wu says they did because everything he told them was broad in scope and it is only the “details that get sticky.”

Thirty-three-year-old Wu suggests that the “sticky” issues can all be thought of as aesthetics, though of course there are “practical consequences,” as well. Wu repeats his recommendation to his employer: they should move to phase two of the project, Version 4.4, and replace the current stock of animals. Hammond finds it difficult to understand Wu’s reasoning, but he listens to his argument.

The control room depresses Grant, as he neither likes nor understands computers. Both Gennaro and Malcolm seem to be just the opposite, and the head engineer, John Arnold, is eager to show them everything.

Arnold demonstrates how he can track animals both in real time and in patterns over time. He can see all two hundred and thirty-eight of them at one time within five feet. The tracking system is updated every thirty seconds and is accomplished with motion sensors and image recognition; even if no humans are watching, the computers are doing so constantly. The only errors happen when tracking the baby dinosaurs because they are so small, but Arnold is not worried because the babies always stay with the herd of adults....

A woman distributes helmets stenciled with “Jurassic Park” as Regis herds the visitors into a line of driverless Toyota Land Cruisers. Grant, Sattler, Malcolm, and Gennaro are in the first electric cable car. Regis and Tim and Lex Murphy are in the second car. Tim is fascinated by all the electronics and the radio transmitter. The radio channel is open between the two cars, and the second car hears Gennaro yelling at Malcolm about “playing mind games” rather than helping him make a very important decision. Regis presses the intercom button and talks briefly about what they will be seeing—and gently reminds the men that everything they say can be heard back here. Gennaro is dismayed because he has to be able to speak...

In the control room, Arnold can hear that the gears on the Land Cruisers are grinding and orders someone to check them. Hammond enters the room and says that is a small thing, but Arnold reminds him that every detail is important. Arnold is acutely aware that this is the first time visitors have been sent into the park; very few park employees even do that. Almost everyone just watches from the control room, and now Arnold thinks of all the things which could go wrong.

Arnold is a systems engineer who worked first on submarine missiles and then on amusement park rides at Disney World and other amusement parks. His job for the past few years has been to “get Jurassic Park up and running,” and he is worried. Two years...

The Land Cruisers stop at the top of a hill; the passengers looking down on a valley with a lagoon can almost believe this is part of the “vanished world” of dinosaurs. Grant is unimpressed and wants to know where the tyrannosaurs are. Regis explains that the little one is often at the lagoon, catching fish by putting his head under the water. The “little one” is an eight-foot-tall two-year-old which weighs three thousand pounds. The full-grown tyrannosaurus generally conceals himself in the foliage during the day because its skin is sensitive to the sun.

The visitors wait impatiently to spot the creature; just as Regis assures them it will not be long, an underground cage appears and deposits a goat into an...

Everyone in the control room, including Henry Wu, is listening to what the touring visitors are saying after seeing the impressive adult tyrannosaurus rex. They are afraid that if the creature ever broke free of his enclosures there “would be no stopping it,” both because of its size and the fact that it has no natural predators. Hammond is disgusted at how negative the men are; Wu is surprised because he was certain he had succeeded in allaying those fears.

Just as Wu believes that his DNA work on the dinosaurs is “fundamentally sound” and believes the park is safe for human visitors. Any problems with either the DNA or the park are not foundational and can be easily repaired or corrected. He finds it...

The Land Cruisers proceed to the south side of the island, a place with more volcanic activity than anywhere else on Isla Nublar. The area is swathed in mist as the storm still threatens, but the visitors can see a black Jeep with a red stripe near an unmoving stegosaur. Regis explains that Doctor Harding, the veterinarian, is here to tend to the sick animal. Grant jumps out of the car and joins the vet; soon all the others are gathered around, as well, listening to the laborious breathing of the sick dinosaur.

Ellie Sattler notices an offensive fishy smell, something she vaguely recognizes, and is surprised. Herbivores generally do not have such a smell; only the carnivores and their droppings have a “real stink.”...

The men in the control room heard Grant’s proclamation that the bit of shell Gennaro discovered is from a dinosaur egg, specifically a velociraptor. Hammond finds the idea preposterous and says of course that cannot be true because only female dinosaurs have been created.

Malcolm suggests they should do a simple test to confirm Grant’s conclusion. Through the communication system in Harding’s Jeep, Malcolm asks Arnold to run a computer tally on the number of animals in the park and transmit it through the vehicle’s computer system. Hammond is smugly satisfied when the numbers appear just as expected. The data shows that there are two hundred and thirty-eight animals on the island, the exact number that should...

Tim Murphy wears night vision goggles and is able to see Grant and Malcolm in the Land Cruiser behind him. Grant uses the radio to tell Regis and the Murphy children to stay in the vehicle during the storm. Tim realizes their electric cars are stopped because of a power outage near the tyrannosaurus paddock. He hears a great thumping on the ground outside. A large, dark figure runs between the two Land Cruisers. Tim is watching intently now; Lex is starting to get upset.

Grant and Tim both see the tyrannosaur at the same time and communicate carefully over the radio so they will not upset Lex. Tim watches the gigantic dinosaur as it looks back and forth between the two vehicles, and the creature stares directly at him....

Harding, Sattler, and Gennaro are in the gas-powered Jeep. Harding is driving them back to the compound when he discovers the road is blocked by a tree which apparently fell during the storm. He tries to call Arnold in the control room and realizes the radio lines must be down, as well. He is not able to reach anyone in the Land Cruisers, either, and assumes the cars must already be back at the camp by now. Harding does not believe they should stay here and wait, as it could be hours before a maintenance crew will be able to move the tree.

He puts the Jeep in reverse, backs into the turnaround, and finds the maintenance road, part of the secondary road system off limits to visitors but necessary for park employees. It...

Though the ten thousand-volt electric fence is clearly marked with a danger sign, Nedry opens it with his bare hand before driving the Jeep out of the garage and then closing the door again behind him. He is inside the park, no more than a mile from the east dock, where he is supposed to meet someone very soon; he is driving too fast in the storm, but he has to stay on his schedule.

Nedry fears the rain might ruin all of his careful plans. If Dodgson’s boat is not waiting for him, as planned, at the east dock, he cannot afford to wait very long. The plan was for him to get the embryos, drop them off, and return back to the control room before his absence was noticed. Nedry meticulously planned every move of this...

In Hammond’s cozy bungalow in a secluded corner of the park, he and Wu have just finished dinner. Wu notices something different about the old man, a new kind of stubbornness. It is an “insistence on having his own way” and a “complete refusal to deal with” the current situation in the park.

After being presented with the evidence that his genetically engineered female dinosaurs are breeding, Wu wanted to go immediately to his laboratory and do some checking, as the implications of breeding dinosaurs capable of living in the wild are terrifying. Hammond, however, insisted that Wu join him for dinner.

Wu notices Hammond’s computer monitor is not working. Hammond assumes it is out because of the...

In the mutilated Land Cruiser, Tim Murphy slowly regains consciousness. Everything aches and all he wants to do is sleep; still he sits up a bit, promptly vomits, and tries to “get his bearings.” He is still in the vehicle, which has been flipped over on its side, and the rain has almost stopped. Tim sees the broken windshield but cannot remember how it happened. In fact, all he remembers is talking to Doctor Grant on the radio when the tyrannosaur stopped between the two cars.

He waits for the nausea to subside and realizes the car is swaying back and forth. When he is finally able to stand up and look out of the broken windshield, he is horrified to see that the Land Cruiser is laying on its side in the branches...

It is black outside, but with his night vision goggles Tim Murphy discovers his sister in a one-meter drainage pipe under the road. Lex has her baseball glove in her mouth and is rocking and hitting her head on the back of the pipe as she whimpers, but she seems unhurt and Tim is relieved. His attempts to cajole her out are futile at first. The girl is terrified of the animals, particularly the tyrannosaur, but eventually she emerges and Tim is relieved to see that, other than some dried blood on her forehead, she seems to be unhurt. Lex asks about Grant, whom she had seen earlier; she begins to holler for him and in a moment Grant appears. Other than a torn shirt, he seems unhurt as well.

Harding, Gennaro, and Sattler are in the Jeep, following the moving group of compys; just as they see what they think what may be headlights on the road ahead of them, the radio begins to crackle. The transmission is intermittent, but Harding manages to understand that the Jeep he is driving is needed back at camp so Muldoon can go rescue the rest of the visitors; he is not able to understand why, but he turns around and drives back to the visitor center. Muldoon is greets them, shouting and waving his arms.

Hammond is in the control room, cursing at Arnold and insisting the man bring Hammond’s grandchildren back to safety immediately. Wu watches, stunned. Unlike Hammond, Arnold knows that screaming and insisting will...

Muldoon and Gennaro race in the Jeep toward the last known location of the Land Cruisers and, presumably, the visitors. No one has heard anything from them in the past hour, and both men fear something must have happened to them.

At the bottom of the hill near where the cars stopped during the power outage, the men see “something white, lying among the ferns by the side of the road.” Muldoon stops the car and Gennaro is appalled to see a human leg wearing the same shoe Ed Regis had been wearing. Muldoon examines the limb and determines that it was torn, not bitten, from the rest of the body. He is certain this was done by the T-rex and wraps the bloody limb in a tarp before handing it to a nauseated Gennaro to wedge...

Gennaro is shocked at Hammond’s reaction after Gennaro told the old man that his grandchildren are missing somewhere in the park. Hammond calmly eats ice cream and insists they will be found as soon as the equipment is running again. After all, he designed the park for kids and this is just a “regrettable, unfortunate accident.” He is confident Muldoon will have the children back even before he finishes his ice cream.

In the control room, Wu suggests that Arnold check the safety systems at the main panel; the Keycheck safety system records every keystroke made by every operator who has access to the system. Arnold follows the codes Nedry entered and can see that Nedry had been trying to turn off all the safety...

It is almost nine o’clock. Lex is tired and insists that Grant carry her. While he and Tim walk, Grant is trying to discover where they are. He suspects they are in the tyrannosaurus paddock, a dangerous place to be even though there is no sign of either dinosaur. The positive thing is that as soon as they reach some kind of fence or barrier, they will know they have left this most dangerous area.

Lex falls asleep and Grant asks the boy how he is holding up. Tim says he is doing fine and agrees that they are in the tyrannosaur area. Grant wants to move into the woods so he can navigate by the numbers on the motion sensors, which appear to be numbered in descending order. Tim realizes the numbers are getting smaller as...

Muldoon and Gennaro enter the control room just as Arnold discovers the command he needs to restore the original security code. The new command also erases all evidence that anyone had ever manipulated the security system, something Arnold says is “pretty slick.” He enters the command and immediately the lights in the park begin to shine; it will take a little longer for all the electric fences and motion sensors to be fully operational. It is nine thirty and everything is operating correctly again.

Grant wakes up for a moment when the lights shine, and he knows all he has to do is get the attention of the nearest motion sensor and someone will come get them; however, he decides he can wait just a few more moments...

Muldoon and two maintenance men finally find the cause of the short-circuited area of the fence near the jungle river. A tree which had been tied down with guy wires and metal turnbuckles fell onto the fence in the storm, and the metal pieces caused the outage. It should only take twenty minutes to repair, which is good since Muldoon knows that the dilophosaurs stay close to the river and can spit their poison even through the fence. One of the men points out the faint lights which look like the lights of an unmoving car. After the fence is repaired, they will investigate.

In the control room, Arnold is feeling good about how things are progressing on the island, so he indulges Gennaro and explains the Malcolm Effect....

Grant is dismayed that he fell asleep, but it is only five o’clock when he wakes and there is still enough time to contact the ship before it reaches the mainland. Grant sees the maintenance building for the sauropod paddock and enters; he tries the phone and gets nothing but static. Then he hears Lex's voice and investigates.

Lex is feeding hay to a round, pink baby triceratops which is as big as a pony. The creature’s head is stuck through the metal bars of the building and it munches contentedly; it almost purrs when she pets it. She has named the animal Ralph and wants to ride it, but just then Ralph starts to get agitated. His mother, six feet long, has come for her baby; after peering intently at Grant and...

Grant and the children sit in a tree when they see a duck-billed hadrosaur nibbling leaves off the branch they are on. The herbivore is not threatening (it rather reminds Grant of a cud-chewing cow), and Grant does an experiment. When he coughs, both the hadrosaur and its baby are frightened; however, it is clear to Grant that the animal standing only a few feet from him cannot see him. When Lex moves a bit, the animals move in agitation again. Soon the adult returns to the tree and begins eating. Grant’s theory is confirmed: dinosaurs cannot see humans unless the humans move.

In the control room, Arnold is methodically checking the park for the Jeep Nedry took. Muldoon is adamant that it be found because it...

Gennaro and Muldoon drive to the site of the hadrosaur-tyrannosaur skirmish to survey the damage. It is clear the tyrannosaur has been here as the site looks like a battleground, but the men have no weapons to combat it if they encounter the giant dinosaur. Gennaro mistakenly believes the Jeep can outrun the dinosaur, but Muldoon assures him that is not the case. They carefully leave the vehicle and examine the mutilated carcass; Muldoon determines that the young animal fell behind the herd and was caught and killed by the tyrannosaur. Muldoon calls Arnold and gives him the identification number of the dead animal. Arnold also has news: he has found Nedry.

Arnold talks to Malcolm over the telephone, tired and frustrated that he has been unable to locate the tyrannosaur or the humans. The coughing mathematician reminds Arnold that the motion sensors only cover ninety-two percent of the park; it is likely that the remaining eight percent is contiguous and that is where the dinosaur, and perhaps the humans, are likely to be. Malcolm suggests Grant may have the kids with him in a raft on the river. Arnold hopes that is not the case because it passes so close to the aviary.

The original plans for Jurassic Park called for a treetop lodge to be built overlooking the aviary, but it remains unfinished because the workers discovered the large birds in the aviary are “fiercely...

Arnold locates the tyrannosaur moving along the riverbank and radios the information to Muldoon and Gennaro in the Jeep. When Arnold reminds Muldoon not to hurt the most popular attraction in Jurassic Park, Muldoon is disgusted that anyone still considers the park a tourist attraction. He asks Gennaro to prepare the canisters of tranquilizers. As they drive closer, Muldoon tells Gennaro that dinosaurs are difficult to classify because they are all so different; however, raptors are so smart that if any of them ever escaped their enclosures there would be more trouble than one could imagine.

They watch the tyrannosaur walk and snap at something along the riverbank, as if it were stalking prey which is just out of its...

In the control room, Muldoon realizes his second shot hit its mark but it took the animal an hour to react. Just as Arnold is gloating that none of Malcolm’s dire predictions have come true and the park is “completely under control again,” a blinking light warns that auxiliary power is running low. This is puzzling, since Arnold does not think anything is running on auxiliary. Suddenly the power is gone.

Tim sees a dart piercing the tyrannosaur just behind its ear. The animal’s labored breathing fills Tim with compassion and he reminds Lex that it was only trying to eat them because that is what carnivores instinctively do. Suddenly the waterfall trickles to a halt and the door behind them opens. The power has...

Grant drives the cart with the children and the young velociraptor; it is ten o’clock. At the visitor center garage, they cage the raptor before going upstairs and finding a horrible scene of death and destruction. Grant grabs a radio and tries to explain to Muldoon that they must contact the ship, but Muldoon says there is no electricity and the survivors in the safari lodge only have about another fifteen minutes to live. The raptors are able to chew through metal and are even now working on the metal bars above them.

Muldoon is injured and Wu has to run the computers, so Sattler decides to act as “bait,” distracting the raptors from the roof and allowing Grant time to turn the power back on. Sattler rattles the...

Tim is in the control room, struggling to return to the main computer screen as Lex screams in his ear and jumps up and down, making him even more nervous. Finally he gets to the correct screen but is not familiar with the commands. In frustration he starts punching all kinds of buttons, and he has no idea what to try next. Lex finally demands his attention and makes him listen to the noise in the hallway. The velociraptors have arrived.

Above Malcolm’s bed, the raptors have almost bitten through the second metal bar and are already sticking their heads through the shattered glass to threaten the humans below. In another few minutes the rapacious creatures will be able to drop in from the roof. Muldoon calls Tim on...

Malcolm is dying and Harding is extremely concerned. Sattler is wrapped in a blanket, shivering, and Muldoon is sitting on the floor against the wall. Hammond just stares upward in silence. They are all listening for any noise on the radio, but it remains silent. Malcolm calls the velociraptors ugly and Hammond says he could never have imagined his grand plans ending this way. Malcolm claims he did not imagine it; he calculated it.

Hammond does not want to hear any more defamation, but Malcolm is undeterred. He continues his tirade, saying Hammond tried to control nature and now he knows that nature will not be controlled. The old man does not comprehend what the mathematician is saying. They all hope...

The computer screen in the control room flashes on and off and Tim does not know why. Grant does not understand computers, so Tim sits at the controls and presses buttons until he brings the video monitors to life. On one screen they can all see the ship; it is only about two hundred yards from the dock at Puntarenas. On another monitor they see the raptors on the ceiling of the room in the lodge, and they can hear the snarling creatures over the radio. Lex spurs her brother to get the power working again.

The computer screen says the auxiliary power is failing, and Gennaro remembers that Tim must turn on the main power. For a frustrating moment or two Tim struggles to follow the commands on the screen, but soon the...

Once the velociraptors have been destroyed, Malcolm is moved to a clean bed and Hammond somehow seems to have revived. Hammond is thankful that disaster has been averted and the dinosaurs will not destroy the planet. Malcolm is weak but has the energy to scorn Hammond’s ridiculous egotism and remind the foolish old man that the planet has survived billions of years of upheaval and it will most certainly survive Hammond.

Hammond says surely a radiation accident would kill the planet, but Malcolm insists that even if every visible plant, animal, and human dies in a radiation accident, “life would survive somewhere.” Perhaps in Arctic ice or under the ground, some life would begin the evolutionary process once...

Four hours have passed, and things seem to be functioning properly. Of the twenty-four people who had been on the island, eight are now dead and six are missing. The Safari lodge and the visitor center seem to be secure and the northern perimeter of the island appears free of dinosaurs. The authorities in San Jose have been notified and the Costa Rican National Guard is on its way, along with an air ambulance to take Malcolm to the mainland. Undoubtedly there have been conversations between the authorities in San Jose and Washington, as well. The three raptors found on the ship have been killed. It is getting dark; if the helicopters do not arrive soon they will have to wait until tomorrow.

Ian Malcolm has slipped into a coma and may die before the air ambulance comes to get him. Hammond is “impatient and uncomfortable,” and when he considers the possibility that Malcolm might not live, he is filled with “anxiety and dread.” These feelings are intensified by the fact that Hammond so dislikes the mathematician, as Malcolm’s death represents the “final rebuke” which he could not bear.

Harding keeps watch over the dying man and Hammond feels he must escape the putrid smell of the decaying flesh of Malcolm’s leg. He goes outside and through the gates where he looks with satisfaction at his creation. No matter what others say or whether Gennaro has it burned to the ground, Hammond knows his idea...

Sattler wants to see the dinosaur nest and slides down the hole just as Grant did a few moments before. Gennaro tells Muldoon he is not going to follow the "crazy" paleontologists, but Muldoon reminds him that the doctors are waiting for him and calmly threatens Gennaro with a shock stick and eventually the frightened man climbs head-first into the hole.

It is a rough descent, but soon Gennaro lands at the bottom of the hole and the two doctors are whispering and prodding him to see if he is okay. He is, and he asks why they are whispering. Sattler points and Gennaro begins adjusting to the dark. He sees dozens of “glowing green eyes” everywhere around him.

John Hammond sits down heavily on a hillside and struggles to catch his breath. It is hot and humid, making breathing even more difficult. Forty feet below, the stream trickles by; despite his purple, swollen ankle, he has reached this position by hopping on one foot. Hammond cannot place any weight on his broken foot, and his good leg is now burning from the extreme exertion.

He is also thirsty, despite the fact that he recently drank some water from the stream—something he knew was not a good idea. From below he thought he heard footsteps several times on the path at the top of the hill and had shouted loudly; however, no one answered and soon he realized he would have to get himself up the hill if he wanted anyone...

Grant follows the group of velociraptors through the dark tunnel that ends up on the beach. At first the young raptors frolic on the sand, but they inexplicably move into the shade of the palm trees at the edge of the beach. There, they turn to face the water in the same peculiar way as they did down in the nesting site. They all face the same direction, north-northwest. Sattler and Grant still cannot explain their behavior, but they do realize that this is how the raptors have been escaping the fences in the park.

Out of the fog a freighter appears on the horizon; the animals must have heard it. The dinosaurs grow active again and Grant is fascinated to see that there is a hierarchy and order among the herd that he had...

Sattler is thrilled at the idea of the velociraptors migrating and so is Grant, but they do not know where the animals want to go. Military helicopters “burst through the fog, thundering and wheeling over the landscape.” As the choppers circle around and land on the beach, the raptors scatter. Uniformed men speaking Spanish immediately run to Grant, Sattler, and Gennaro. Grant sees that Muldoon and the children are already in the helicopter, and one of the soldiers speaks to Grant in English.

He asks the adults to come with them now because they are out of time. Grant examines the beach but sees no sign of the raptors; it is as if they had never existed. Grant follows the soldiers to the waiting aircraft where...

The Costa Rican government keeps the survivors in a fine hotel in San Jose. They are free to go where they choose and talk to whomever they wish but are not allowed to leave the country. Every day an American Embassy representative visits and asks if they need anything; he always assures them that Washington is doing everything it can to get them home.

The reality, though, is that many people died on a territorial possession of Costa Rica and an “ecological disaster had been narrowly averted.” Because it feels as if it were lied to by Hammond, the government is not particularly eager to release the survivors. Neither Hammond nor Malcolm is allowed to be buried, and every day Grant is taken in for questioning about...